Featured Research

Antarctic Ice Core Hints Abrupt Warming Some 12,500 Years Ago May Have Been Global

Date:

October 2, 1998

Source:

University Of Colorado At Boulder

Summary:

An analysis of an ancient Antarctic ice core indicates an abrupt climate warming occurred there about 12,500 years ago, an event previously thought to have primarily influenced climate in the Northern Hemisphere.

Share This

An analysis of an ancient Antarctic ice core indicates an abrupt climate warming occurred there about 12,500 years ago, an event previously thought to have primarily influenced climate in the Northern Hemisphere.

Related Articles

James White, a paleo-climatologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said changes in stable isotope ratios -- an indicator of past temperatures in the Taylor Dome ice core from Antarctica -- are almost identical to changes seen in cores from Greenland's GISP 2 core from the same period.

"The ice cores from opposite ends of the earth can be accurately cross-dated using the large, rapid climate changes in the methane concentrations from the atmosphere that accompanied the warming," White said.

The evidence from the greenhouse gas bubbles indicates temperatures from the end of the Younger Dryas Period to the beginning of the Holocene some 12,500 years ago rose about 20 degrees Fahrenheit in a 50-year period in Antarctica, much of it in several major leaps lasting less than a decade.

"We used to think this climate change signal from the Younger Dryas to the Holocene was a big event in the Arctic, but not much more than a blip on the screen in the Antarctic," said White, also a CU associate professor of geology and former interim director of the National Ice Core Laboratory in Lakewood, Colo. "But these findings throw a monkey wrench into paleo-climate research and rearrange our thinking about climate change at that time."

A paper principally authored by research associate Eric Steig and co-authored by White and Scott Lehman, all of CU's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, was published in the Oct. 2 issue of Science. The paper also included co-authors from Washington State University, the University of Rhode Island, Princeton University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Washington and the U. S. Geological Survey.

Deep-sea sediment cores from temperate regions, combined with arctic ice core evidence, confirm the climate warmed rapidly at the end of the Younger Dryas in the Northern Hemisphere, said White. But the amount of methane -- a greenhouse gas primarily produced in tropical regions -- that was found recently in the Taylor Dome Antarctic ice core argues for a more global climate-warming episode 12,500 years ago.

"What the Taylor Dome ice core seems to be telling us is there was a synchronization of warming at the end of the Younger Dryas at both poles," said White. "This strengthens the argument that the warming phenomenon was global since the cores from both poles seem to be dancing to the same tune at the same time."

Other Antarctic ice cores from the same time period like the Byrd and Vostok cores drilled in Antarctica's interior contain climate records that do not correlate well with the Taylor Dome ice core, which was drilled on the southern edge of the continent near the Ross Sea, said White.

"There is no Rosetta stone ice core," said White. "It is becoming clear that ice cores in different parts of the major ice sheets record the different climates in those areas. The Taylor Dome ice core may correlate more with Greenland ice cores in part because it was taken near the Ross Sea, an area of active ocean-atmosphere heat exchange today."

Chemical changes seen in ice cores are helping scientists understand how humans are "presently re-arranging Earth's energy budget and the global carbon cycle by increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," he said. The research team used both changes in atmospheric methane and the differing isotopic ratios of molecular hydrogen found in ice cores at both poles to reach their conclusions.

University Of Colorado At Boulder. "Antarctic Ice Core Hints Abrupt Warming Some 12,500 Years Ago May Have Been Global." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 2 October 1998. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/10/981002082033.htm>.

University Of Colorado At Boulder. (1998, October 2). Antarctic Ice Core Hints Abrupt Warming Some 12,500 Years Ago May Have Been Global. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 3, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/10/981002082033.htm

University Of Colorado At Boulder. "Antarctic Ice Core Hints Abrupt Warming Some 12,500 Years Ago May Have Been Global." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/10/981002082033.htm (accessed March 3, 2015).

More From ScienceDaily

More Earth & Climate News

Featured Research

Mar. 3, 2015 — Attendance at schools exposed to high levels of traffic-related air pollution is linked to slower cognitive development among 7- to 10-year-old children in Barcelona, according to a new ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — While studying a ground-nesting bird population near El Reno, Okla., a research team found that stress during a severe weather outbreak of May 31, 2013, had manifested itself into malformations in ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Researchers studied quartz from the San Andreas Fault at the microscopic scale, the scale at which earthquake-triggering stresses originate. The results could one day lead to a better understanding ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — The 3-D printing scene, a growing favorite of do-it-yourselfers, has spread to the study of plasma physics. With a series of experiments, researchers have found that 3-D printers can be an important ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Researchers have developed a new way of rapidly screening yeasts that could help produce more sustainable biofuels. The new technique could also be a boon in the search for new ways of deriving ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — For almost a century, scientists have been puzzled by a process that is crucial to much of the life in Earth's oceans: Why does calcium carbonate, the tough material of seashells and corals, ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Major cities in the UK are falling behind their international counterparts in terms of their use of smart technologies, according to a new study. The research has found that smart cities in the UK, ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — To simulate chimp behavior, scientists created a computer model based on equations normally used to describe the movement of atoms and molecules in a confined space. An interdisciplinary research ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Rather than just waiting patiently for any pollinator that comes their way to start the next generation of seeds, some plants appear to recognize the best suitors and 'turn on' to increase the chance ... full story

Featured Videos

Looted and Leaking, South Sudan's Oil Wells Pose Health Risk

AFP (Mar. 3, 2015) — Thick black puddles and a looted, leaking ruin are all that remain of the Thar Jath oil treatment facility, once a crucial part of South Sudan&apos;s mainstay industry. Duration: 01:13
Video provided by AFP

Related Stories

Oct. 1, 2014 — Current changes in the ocean around Antarctica are disturbingly close to conditions 14,000 years ago that new research shows may have led to the rapid melting of Antarctic ice and an abrupt 3-4 meter ... full story

Aug. 14, 2013 — New research from an ice core taken from West Antarctica shows that the warming that ended the last ice age in Antarctica began at least two, and perhaps four, millennia earlier than previously ... full story

Mar. 15, 2011 — Researchers have determined that the influence of northern peatlands on the prehistorical record of climate change has been over estimated, but the vast northern wetlands must still be watched ... full story

Oct. 5, 2010 — While sea ice extent has declined dramatically in the Arctic in recent years, it has increased slightly in the Antarctic. Some scientists have suggested that increased Antarctic sea ice extent can be ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.